The present invention relates to a printed wiring board (PWB) being used as a printhead and, more particularly, to a glass substrate printed wiring board printhead for electric paper.
Electric paper can be defined as any electronically addressable display medium that approximates paper in form and function. Electric paper should be light-weight, thin and flexible, and it should display images indefinitely while consuming little or no power. In addition, electric paper should be re-usable. One must be able to erase images and create new ones repeatedly. Preferably, electric paper should display images using only reflected light and allow a very wide-viewing angle.
One way to make electric paper possible using traditional electronic display technology is to completely remove the driving electronics from an electronic display package and use external addressing electrodes to write and erase images. This approach both reduces the per unit cost of electronic paper sheets and enables the use of cheap, flexible plastic films in place of glass plates for packaging. Multiple electronic paper sheets can then be addressed by a single set of external driving electronics, much like multiple sheets of pulp paper are printed on by a single printer.
This invention is designed for use with Gyricon electric paper but may also be used with electric paper based on liquid crystal, electrophoretic, and other field-effect display technologies.
The Gyricon sheet and display system is disclosed in various patents and articles, such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,126,854 by Sheridon titled xe2x80x9cTwisting Ball Displayxe2x80x9d, commonly assigned as the present application and herein incorporated by reference. The Gyricon display system is comprised of an elastomeric host layer a few mils thick which is heavily loaded with rotating elements, possibly spheres, tens of microns in diameter. Each bichromal rotating element has halves of contrasting colors, such as a white half and a black half, and forms a single picture element or pixel. Each bichromal rotating element also possesses an electric dipole, orthogonal to the plane that divides the two colored halves. Each bichromal rotating element is contained in its own cavity filled with a dielectric liquid. Upon application of an electric field between electrodes located on opposite surfaces of the host layer, the rotating elements will rotate depending on the polarity of the field, presenting either the white side or the black side to an observer.
Printing is accomplished by imposing an electrical pattern over the sheet, where there is a voltage difference between the top side and the bottom side. A typical way to do this is to pass the paper under a charging bar. As the paper passes under the bar, voltages are applied along a set of closely-spaced electrical contacts, one for each bichromal rotating element or pixel.
The response pattern of the bichromal rotating element to an external electrical field determines the types of addressing that may be used to create images on the Gyricon electric paper display. There are known in the art three types of addressing schemes for displays.
In active matrix addressing, a separate addressing electrode is provided for each bichromal rotating element or pixel of the display and each of these electrodes is continuously supplied with an addressing voltage. The complete set of voltages can be changed for each addressing frame. This type of addressing places the least demands on the properties of the display medium, however, active matrix addressing is the most expensive, most complicated and most energy consuming type of addressing.
The second type of addressing scheme is passive matrix addressing. Passive matrix addressing makes use of two sets of electrodes, one on each side of the display medium. Typically, one of these consists of horizontal conductive bars and the other consists of vertical conductive bars. The bars on the front surface or window of the display are necessarily transparent. To address the display medium, a voltage is placed on a horizontal conductive bar and a voltage is placed on a vertical conductive bar. The segment of medium located at the intersection of these two bars experiences a voltage equal to the sum of these two voltages.
Passive addressing is less complicated and more energy efficient because the pixels of the display medium are addressed only for as long as is required to change their optical states. However, the requirements for a medium that can be addressed with a passive matrix display are significantly greater than for the active matrix case. The medium must respond fully to the full addressing voltage but it must not respond to xc2xd the full addressing voltage. This is called a threshold response behavior. The medium must also stay in whichever optical state it has been switched into by the addressing electrodes without the continuous application of voltage, that is it should store the image without power. Passive addressing is the most widely used method of addressing displays and is the lowest cost.
The third type of addressing, and probably the most useful for electric paper applications, consists of a linear array of addressing electrodes in the form of a bar that can be moved over the surface of the display medium. Typically, the medium is placed over a grounding electrode and is protected from possible mechanical damage from the moving bar by placing a thin window between the bar and the electric paper. As the bar is moved over the display medium, it applies voltages to specific bichromal rotating elements or pixels of the medium for short periods of time and generates a full image each time the bar is scanned over the surface.
Print heads can be used as the third type of addressing electric paper with a linear bar array as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,513, commonly assigned as the present application and herein incorporated by reference.
Printed wiring boards have been used as the print heads in electrostatic printing for electrically addressing points across a dielectric medium.
A printed wiring board is a flat plate or base of insulating material containing a pattern of conducting material. The patterned conducting material forms traces which electrically connect electronic components on the surface of the printed wiring board to form circuits.
The conducting material is commonly copper which has been coated with solder or plated with tin or tin-lead alloy. The usual insulating material is epoxy laminate. But there are many other kinds of materials used in more exotic technologies. Printed wiring boards are also called printed circuit boards.
The patterned conducting material in addition to forming connective traces also forms pads, conductive areas on the surface of the printing wiring board. Pads are provided on the board so that connection can be made to the surface mounted components. The surface mounted components are any of the basic electronic parts used in forming a circuit such as resistors, capacitors, DIP, integrated circuits and the like.
Single layer printed wiring boards have all the conductors, the traces, pads and surface mounted components on one side of the board. For the purpose of functioning as print heads, printed wiring boards have all their components and conductors on a single side.
Conventional printed wiring boards are manufactured by joining an epoxy laminate and a copper laminate with heat and pressure. The epoxy laminate is much thicker than the copper laminate and it provides mechanical support for the printed wiring board. Application of heat and pressure causes the epoxy to soften and bond to the copper laminate. The copper surface is treated either chemically, or electrochemically with dendritic treatment, both of which produce a jagged surface on a microscopic scale, which promotes adhesion to the epoxy laminate.
Photo-resist is then applied on the copper surface. Liquid photo-resist application has recently been replaced by xe2x80x9cdryxe2x80x9d photo-resist methods. In the dry photo-resist technique, a photo-resist film is laminated on the copper, also by application of heat and pressure.
The conductor pattern for the traces and pads for the circuitry of the printed wiring board is then xe2x80x9cexposedxe2x80x9d on the photo-resist. The exposed board is xe2x80x9cdevelopedxe2x80x9d in an appropriate chemical solution that dissolves the photo-resist, consequently exposing the copper surface along the areas which are to be etched.
In the copper etching operation, the developed board is passed through a chemical spray chamber, where jets spray chemicals which dissolve copper. The photo-resist and the copper etching solution have been chosen so that the sprayed chemicals only dissolve the copper and not the photo-resist. At the conclusion of the copper etching process, a well defined conductor pattern of traces and pads with a overlay of photo-resist is left on the epoxy substrate.
The photo-resist overlay is then etched away by another chemical solution which etches only the photo-resist and not the copper.
The necessary print head electric components are then mounted to the appropriate pre-determined points in the traces and pads on the copper conductor pattern on the surface of the printed wiring board. Electrodes extend over the edge of the printed wiring board to provide electric contacts for the print head.
There are problems with using a conventional printed wiring board as the print head for electric paper. Typical etch line width and spacing for the electrodes of a printed wiring board are 0.003 inches which does not provide a high enough density of spots per inch (spi) for electric paper. The printed wiring board is subject to a predictable amount of expansion, twist and warping during the manufacturing process. The printhead for electric paper must be structurally strong to avoid warping and thus inaccurate printing of spots during high spi printing. A printed wiring board used as a print head in an electrostatic printer uses extremely high voltages far exceeding the small voltages needed for the subtle changes to cause the bichromal rotating element or pixel to rotate black and white sides in the display sheet of the electric paper.
It is an object of this invention to provide a printed wiring board for use as a printhead for electric paper.
According to the present invention, a glass substrate printed wiring board is used as the printhead for electric paper. Printing electrodes are formed at the edge of the glass substrate. Signals are generated by a driver circuit and conducted by traces to the electrodes to generate an electric field to rotate the bichromal rotating elements of the electric paper to form black or white pixels.
The electrodes have a robust wear metallic layer deposited over the conductive traces. An isolation resistor is provided on each trace between the electrode and the driver circuit.
The pitch between the electrodes of the printhead matches the pitch of the bichromal rotating elements of the electric paper with each electrode having a single corresponding bichromal rotating element.
Other objects and attainments together with a fuller understanding of the invention will become apparent and appreciated by referring to the following description and claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.